Community Supported Everything .

Slow Money

Carol Peppe Hewitt

This week a delightful phone interview and an invitation to share the wisdom and passion of Carol Peppe Hewitt, a woman dedicated to creating bioregional financing opportunities for small farmers and craftsmen through Slow Money.

Fast money would be your money, that you have no control over. This is sitting in an account, or funds sitting in traditional banks. This money is being move around in ways that would make your head spin, but probably won’t help you or your neighbor or your community much because it is spread all over the world. Slow money is money you have in your possession and you get to choose where it is invested.

Carol has taken this idea and grown it locally in North Carolina where she has raised over two million dollars in slow money that has been re-invested in her community. Carol will be in Coeur d’Alene on Thursday to share her ideas and on Friday at the Rural Roots conference in Moscow.

Carol was asked to compile some their success stories and present some tools for us to use to get some of these solutions functioning in our bioregion. Her book is called “Financing our Foodshed / Growing Local Food with Slow Money.

Here is one small success story attributed to Slow Money in North Carolina. It involves a meat packer who needed $500 for a new label machine, a market that owed him money, and a loyal customer who wanted to help. No Banking officers anywhere nearby.

Chatham Marketplace

(Helped with the loan in the story above, and received a $500 Slow Money loan to refinance it’s debt with low-interest local funds.)

“Farming has many joys, but steady cash flow is not one of them. Withington and his wife, needed to upgrade their meat packing labels to meet regulatory standards. This would cost $500. Meanwhile, Withington tells me, the Chatham Marketplace owed him money for some of his meat.

“An elegant solution was arranged: A regular shopper at Chatham Marketplace loaned Withington the $500. The grocery in turn issued five $100 gift cards to the lender, thus redirecting the debt the store owed the Withingtons who then issued a gift certificate to the lender to cover the interest payment, plus he made a small donation to The Abundance Foundation, the fiscal sponsor of Slow Money NC.”

“So, basically, we took out the loan, paid off the loan, collected debt and the Marketplace got rid of debt, all in a five-minute transaction,” Withington says. ( Quoted from Indy Week • 201 W. Main St., Suite 101, Durham, NC 27701)

Chatham Marketplace

(Helped with the loan in the story above, and received a $400k Slow Money loan to refinance it’s debt with low-interest local funds.)

What is a Foodshed?

A “foodshed” derived from “watershed” is basically a local region, or a bioregion.

Carol was asked to compile some their success stories and present some tools for us to use to get some of these solutions functioning in our bioregion. Her book is called “Financing our Foodshed / Growing Local Food with Slow Money. There are a few links below. Carol recommends contacting here for your copy if you are interested. Also in the link department contact information, a link to the NC Slow Food Blog, and a link to more information about Woody Tasch’s book

This Week, we will have another discussion with Alan Berger of Neighborgoods.net. In our last discussion we covered the ideology behind and advantages of new peer to peer sharing networks. Today we go into some details on how and where you can start a free sharing network.

Do you ever have moments, when you just wondering what direction is my life going, do I need to stop, turn around, go back??

If you listened to my last show, you will know that I am seeking to refocus Thinking Outside of the Box and that I really don’t have an idea what that focus should be.

Have I gotten any closer to defining that, Well –lllll l let’s just wait and see. I will tell you that I’m sitting here at the computer scratching my head, another deadline to meet, so I Googled ” what the heck am I doing with my life?” (verbiage modified) I just feel I need to put some spark Back into my life! I need to recharge , I need to find that creative fuel. Oddly enough the Google search brought me to a website called Master Dabblers, and a post titled “What the Hell am I doing with my Life?” (Honest, that is what it is titled) ( The sub title: Why doubting yourself is good.)

Just the title and sub title were helpful, and here’s quote from that —- and I can tell you now it did put some fuel into my creative furnace.

From that Blog: “master dabblers”

“Despite your fears, anxieties, the pressure, taboos, lack of support/fame, doubts, would you still walk into your studio, corner, garage, nook, office–wherever you create–and continue to make something? In other words, if all your doubts were true–you’re a fraud, you suck, nobody likes your work, and you may in fact be wasting your time–would you still pick up your tools and create something?”

“If your answer is yes, you have true passion for your work, and all your doubting is just a reminder that you love what you do.

“And if you love what you do,…………..how you could be any more successful than that.”

If you listened last week you know that I googled “save the world complex” and from that I went on with some inspirations for the show and some questions for you dear listener.

So —– I will forget my fears and doubts and just go on from here. Today we have an interview with Alan Berger who is the Executive Director of neighborgoods.net. I interviewed Alan a while back and we talked about the positive aspects of the sharing economy. This interview deals more with the nuts and bolts of how you or I can set up a local sharing network.

Neighborhood Goods is an up-and-coming sharing network which offers us the opportunity to do much much more with what we have, and along with that enable us to get things done other people’s things. To me, neighborhoods could grow into the “craigslist” of doing more with what we have and connecting with and getting to know our neighbors.

Alan lives in New York, where he has a successful sharing network going. He show us we can sign-on to neighbor goods.net and create our own local network where we can do the same— FOR FREE!.

I want to encourage you to explore the many peer-to-peer sharing, and selling networks out there. If you looking to rent a house, find a vacation rental, get a ride somewhere, find help with chores or garden projects or just share something you already have, most likely there’s a network out there to help.

Today, Thinking Outside of the Box goes into yet another new realm, economics.

We are going to be talking about the sharing economy. The Sharing Economy is a burgeoning area that is allowing us to share peer-to-peer with sites like Air B&B, and get around.com and other car sharing, parking space sharing, you name it, if there is a need there is a network. With the advent of the Internet, it has allowed us much greater access to each other. It has given us ways to connect and share things that 20 or 30 years ago where not even dreamed of.

Neighborgoods is a free peer to peer sharing network with its focus on the day to day needs that we have right in our neighborhoods. The site is not focused on making money it is just focused on getting back to the basics of how we care for ourselves our possessions and properties as well as how we care for each other in order to really enjoy day-to-day living.

This interview is the beginning of a discussion on Neighborgoods.Net, I’m talking with Alan Berger the Executive Director of this free peer to peer sharing network. We just scratched the surface of the new world of “collaborative consumption” and our next instalment will cover more details on how we can set up our own network for free and have fun building community.

Below find some specific information about NeighborGood.Net and some of Alan’s thoughts on the new sharing economy:

Neighborgoods is a free peer to peer sharing network with its focus on the day to day needs that we have right in our neighborhoods. The site is not focused on making money it is just focused on getting back to the basics of how we care for ourselves our possessions and properties as well as how we care for each other in order to really enjoy day-to-day living.

No doubt you’ve heard of Zipcar, Airbnb, the NYC bike sharing program, and maybe Rent the Runway and Lyft too. These are all examples of what is being called the sharing economy or collective consumption economy. This growing movement recognizes that we don’t have unlimited resources (money, energy, raw materials, etc.) and it’s wasteful and inefficient for everyone to personally continue to amass more and more stuff, much of it used infrequently, when a lot of what we need and want already probably exists in our own neighborhood. We’d be better off sharing the things we need rather than everyone owning everything, and by sharing we’ll be building more cohesive and self reliant communities.

America has always stressed ownership and personal property–of homes, cars, land, all consumer goods in fact. This concept of sharing goods goes against the grain. Running a site that is not focused on monetization, goes against the grain. Getting back to the basics of how we care for ourselves, our possessions and properties as well as each other in order to really enjoy day-to-day living. . My goal is simple: to help you feel a deeper sense of well-being so that you can make a bigger difference – and to help you do it in a way that feels wonderful.

Sharing goods-this is where the rubber really hits the road

A short Bio:

Alan has been in the business world for 15 years, then switched to education after his son started school. He was a high school teacher, and an assistant principal in New York City. He then founded a non-profit independent K-12 school — Brooklyn Free School, and served as its Executive Director for 10 years. He began a sharing goods group in his neighborhood last summer and becam Executive Director of NeighborGoods.net.